It Began

I want to emphasize that this blog is about my journey to become a doctor from a difficult and confusing past. When I explain my story to people, it's hard for people to realize what I have gone through, and am currently going through, so I felt it was important to begin this with a trip into the past to explain how I got to this point. I'm going to split the story up into a few parts until we get to current day. I promise I won't bore you with all the details but here we go.

Back in 5th grade, I had my first experience with what I eventually found out was a panic attack. I was doing a dress up biography on Abraham Lincoln, which I was psyched for! For the beginning of the school year, I was in a wheel chair and leg brace after I broke my femur falling off of a razor scooter. Being a 10 year old boy with the energy of a golden retriever puppy who had been let out to run free in a wide open yard for the first time, I went overboard with my presentation. Top hat, beard, coat...The works.

I remember my teacher telling me it was almost time to go on so I headed to the bathroom to put on the costume. Me and a few other class mates got ready and laughed at each others silly interpretations of famous historians and athletes whom we read about the weeks prior. I put on my costume and beard and headed back to class, ready to make the class laugh at my funny getup.

When I came back, it was my turn. I was smiling and laughing at everyone while I took my place in front of the classroom. I began to talk about who I was, Mr. Abraham Lincoln. I wish I could recall the rest but immediately I started to feel weird.

The lights were bright all of a sudden. I started to sweat. My speech began to slur and I stumbled over lines I had practiced every day for the week leading up to this day. What was happening? I started to feel lightheaded, something I had never experienced before. I couldn't walk straight but I stumbled back to my seat and immediately put my head down wondering what was happening.
One student yelled from the side of the room, "What about question and answer?".
"I don't think Jesse is feeling well, let's go on to the next student."
"It's stage fright!".

That's the last thing I remember before my teacher got me and took me down to the nurse immediately. From there things got a little hazy, but I remember thinking... How could it be stage fright? I loved being in front of people and garnering the attention of my peers. A month or so prior, I had been in the school's lip sync, doing the song "The Wanderer" . I was surrounded by 4 girls in my class and everyone in the audience was cheering me on as I took the identity of a pseudo-10-year-old-pimp. The fact of the matter was, I was happiest surrounded by people and being the stand out person of the group!

The nurse called my mother, who immediately made an appointment with my pediatrician. We went in and I described my entire situation. She was the same doctor I had been seeing for years and knew of my high energy personality, and thought it was nearly impossible it would have been stage fright. She assumed I may have had an allergic reaction to the glue on the fake beard of my costume. We retrieved the beard and tried to see if I had an attack when wearing it in the doctors office, but nothing happened. When that failed, I was then diagnosed with "Coxsackievirus", or more commonly Hand-Foot-Mouth disease. The acute nature of the symptoms matched and my parents accepted the diagnosis as an explanation. I spent a few days home and returned to school, completely asymptomatic despite some dizziness only when I entered the class room the first panic attack occurred in. Little did I know that that mild dizzy would be an important clue in what was really going on later in my life. I finished 5th grade normally, with the exception of graduation, where I had a feeling of dizziness again and had to leave the graduation and go to the nurses office. I attributed this to nerves but it turns out nerves were just the start.